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Searching a Word document

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Posted on by Gary

Hello,

I need to search a Word document for certain text. In my flow I've saved the document to SharePoint but am getting conflicting information from Copilot on how to search for text. I've only seen one post on this forum for the same information which contained no answers, and another post where the answers will not display correctly.

I already have a PDF document search that works ok, so if there's no way to search the Word doc, I could convert it to a PDF if someone can help with that instead.

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Building flows

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Michael E. Gernaey 53,452 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi @GC-09061702-0

So, you can easily convert the document to a PDF, using the Convert to PDF action within a Flow that your agent calls.

It would also be how you could search your document using cognitive ai/ai actions to search for it, but that would be again calling a flow, that is either a CoPilot Flow, or a custom flow that you call from CoPilot.

I do not know what your licensing is nor what your DLP policies or any weird configuration globally that would stop the above but OOB that's how you can do it.

Here is an example of the conversion process

How to Convert Word Files to PDF Using Power Automate? [Without Using Premium Connector] - Enjoy SharePoint

If this helps to resolve your issue, if you do not mind Marking as such and maybe a like.

Thanks

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Gary 13 on at

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Thank you Michael,

I'd prefer to check the Word document itself, but if I can't figure that out then I'll try the PDF conversion and mark it as an answer👍

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takolota1 4,974 Moderator on at

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If you have access to Azure there is this template Azure Function App that can pull the text from a Word file & then search the output text, including with Regex.

https://community.powerplatform.com/galleries/gallery-posts/?postid=a5255ced-dc08-f011-bae3-6045bdf03fcb

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Michael E. Gernaey 53,452 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi @Gary

In that case you want to use the this method.

Extract text from Word docx files with Power Automate

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